Interest in voting systems and voting system reform is
growing in the United States. This book is a complete and easy-to-use guide for
citizens, government officials, political activists, students and anyone else
who wants to learn more about voting systems and their political implications.

Voting systems--the procedures by which we cast votes and elect our public
officials--are a crucial part of the democratic election process. The decision
to use one kind of voting system rather than another has far reaching political
consequences.

This book gives readers all the information and analytical tools they need to
make an intelligent choice among voting systems. It provides a set of political
criteria that can be used to judge voting systems. It gives detailed
descriptions of all the common voting systems used in the United States and
other Western democracies, including winner-take-all systems as well as
proportional representation systems. It also provides an analysis of the various
political advantages and disadvantages associated with each type of system. (For
more information, read the Table of Contents or the Introduction
from the book.)

Ordering Information

The paperback edition of this book is $19.95 (ISBN 0-275-96586-4). It can be ordered at any
local bookstore, or you can call Praeger Publishing at 1-800-225-5800, or order
it from Praeger over the Web by clicking
here.

Voting systems--the procedures by which we cast votes and elect
our public officials--are a crucial part of the democratic election process. The
decision to use one kind of voting system rather than another has far reaching
political consequences. Among other things, voting systems help to determine
which officials are elected to run our governments, the variety of parties that
voters have to choose from at the polls, how many citizens will turnout to vote,
which citizens will or will not be represented in our legislatures, and whether
the majority will rule. Ultimately, the choice of voting system not only has a
profound effect on the process of elections, but also on the degree to which a
political system is fair, representative, and democratic.

This book is designed to serve as a guide for people interested in learning
more about voting systems and voting system reform in the United States. It will
help you to evaluate your current voting system and compare it to other systems.
Whether you are a government official considering changes to your voting system,
a local citizen wanting to make your school board more representative of the
community, a political activist concerned about improving American elections, a
student studying voting procedures in a course, or a simply someone curious
about this topic--this book will help you develop a better understanding of this
important political issue.

One goal of this book is to acquaint Americans with the various options
available in the world of voting systems. In many other Western democracies,
voting system reform has been a hot topic and so citizens and politicians in
these countries have learned a great deal about these competing systems. But for
many people in the United States, voting system reform is a new idea, and
discussion has often been hampered by a lack of adequate information. In
particular, many people are simply unfamiliar with the variety of possible
voting systems. It is hard to have a good public debate over voting systems
options if most people are unaware of their choices.

This book aims to remedy that problem. It will acquaint you with the three
basic types of voting systems: plurality-majority systems, proportional
representation systems, and semi-proportional systems. It describes the workings
of over 10 different voting systems, and it explains what the ballots look like,
how votes are cast, and how the winners are determined. All the common voting
systems used in the United States and other Western democracies are included,
along with an appendix that describes some of lesser-used systems.

The primary aim of this book, however, goes beyond simply teaching you to
recognize different voting systems, or enabling you to nod knowingly the next
time someone mentions "cumulative voting." The main purpose is to help
you find the best voting system based on your political values. The book is
designed to give you all the basic information and analytical tools you need to
search out the best system from among the alternatives. Unfortunately, finding
the best set of voting procedures is not easy--it is certainly not something you
can do over lunch. There are a confusing variety of systems to examine and a
large number of political considerations that you must take into account. If you
take a haphazard approach to this choice, you are very likely to make an
ill-informed and misguided decision.

On the other hand, choosing a good voting system is not brain surgery either.
You certainly donít have to be a trained psephologist Ė a scholar of
electoral systems. All you need is a modest amount of time and energy to devote
to the task, a source of reliable information about these systems, and a
systematic approach to analyzing that information. If you provide the first of
these, this book will furnish the second two. It will summarize all of the
important political characteristics of voting systems, and it will guide you
through a series of analytical steps that will help you to organize this
information and to make an intelligent choice among these voting methods.

AN ORGANIZED APPROACH TO FINDING THE BEST SYSTEM

The four steps involved in investigating and selecting a good voting
system--and around which this book is organized--are the following:

Step One: Develop political criteria for judging voting systems. Before
you begin to look at specific systems, you should first think about what makes
for a good voting system. How will you know a good system when you see one? To
answer that question, you need to develop your own set of criteria that you can
use to evaluate these systems.

Step Two: Compile a broad range of alternative voting systems to consider.
You wonít be able to find the best voting system if you arenít considering
all the options. So you need to cast a wide net and examine a variety of voting
methods.

Step Three: Examine the alternatives and identify their political advantages
and disadvantages. To choose the best system, you need to know what the
political effects of each system are. What are the political advantages and
disadvantages of a particular voting system?

Step Four: Determine which voting system best meets your political criteria.
Once you know the political effects of the various options, you can compare them
in a systematic way and decide which one best meets the criteria you set in the
first step of your analysis.

This book is arranged to help you to go through these steps in order. The
first chapter has introductory material intended especially for people who havenít
thought much about voting procedures. It explains what voting systems are, why
they are important, and why they have become the center of an increasing amount
of political activity, both here and abroad. With these preliminaries out of the
way, the book then turns to the process of helping you to analyze different
voting systems. Chapter two covers the first step in this process: the need to
develop criteria for judging voting systems. It gives you an extensive list of
criteria that many scholars and reformers use to evaluate voting systems. These
include such things as ensuring majority rule, producing fair representation for
parties, encouraging voter turnout, being easy to use, and contributing to
stable government. You are encouraged to use this chapter to decide which of
these criteria are the most important. Several exercises are included to help
you prioritize these criteria. By completing them, you will develop your own
political yardstick for assessing voting system options.

Chapters three through six are where you will become acquainted with the
actual voting systems themselves. All the most common and popular voting systems
as well as some uncommon ones are included, so you should have no problem
accomplishing the second step of the choice process: gathering a wide variety of
voting system options to consider. Chapters three through five cover the various
ways to elect legislative bodies: town councils, state legislatures, Congress,
etc. To make the analytic process easier, these voting systems are divided into
three "families" of systems with a chapter devoted to each. Chapter
three describes several kinds of plurality-majority voting systems, which
include the systems most often used in United States elections. Chapter four
addresses proportional representation voting systems, which are commonly used in
most of the other advanced Western democracies. Finally, chapter five describes
a somewhat less common variety of voting systems: semi-proportional systems.

Each of these chapters explains the basic mechanics of these voting
systems--how votes are cast, ballots are counted, and seats awarded to winners.
But to make a good decision you need to know more than just how these systems
work. You also need to know what their political consequences are--the third
step in the choice process. Does a voting system encourage or discourage voter
participation? Does it facilitate or hinder representation of political
minorities? Does it maintain or undermine political stability? Does it invite or
discourage gerrymandering and other forms of political manipulation?

To answer these kind of questions, each section on a particular voting system
contains a description of its main political advantages and disadvantages.
Fortunately, we don't have to merely speculate about these political effects.
Nearly all of the voting systems covered in this book have been in use in the
United States or some other Western country for many decades. This long track
record has allowed political scientists to study these systems for years, and
this book will include many of their findings. The existence of a great deal of
historical evidence and a scholarly literature on this subject means that we can
predict with some confidence many of the political advantages and disadvantages
produced by each voting system.

Naturally, disagreements sometimes do arise over the alleged advantages or
disadvantages of specific systems, even among political scientists, and these
disputes will be covered as well. For example, there is some disagreement over
such things as whether proportional representation governments tend to be more
unstable than those produced by plurality voting, and whether plurality systems
really encourage close representative-constituent relationships. In such
instances, I will describe the arguments and evidence offered by both the
critics and the defenders of a particular system--so that you may decide for
yourself which view seems most valid. Where appropriate, I will also try to give
you an idea of where most experts come down on a particular issue. I will also
highlight some of these disagreements in special sections of the text entitled
"Spotlights on the Debate." These are designed to give you a better
sense of the give and take of the arguments surrounding a particular issue.

Please keep in mind that just because I include a claim or criticism about a
particular system does not necessarily mean it is valid. That is for you to
decide. I have tried to include all the common claims made about each voting
system, even if some of those may be based largely on myth or misinformation. I
assume that people make the best decisions when they are exposed to all the
arguments surrounding an issue--both the good and the bad arguments. I believe
that if you have enough information and analysis available, you will be able to
figure out for yourself which claims are dubious and which are sound.

Chapter six is somewhat of a special case. Most of the current discussion
over competing voting systems concerns legislative elections, and the analysis
of these systems form the heart of the book. But we also hold elections for
single offices such as mayor and governor, and how we do that is the topic of
this chapter. In the United States, there is beginning to be debate about the
voting systems used in fill these executive positions. In these elections, there
are fewer options than with legislative elections. Obviously systems that
require multimember districts, such as proportional and semi-proportional
systems, cannot be used to elect a single official. So we are left with several
forms of plurality and majority voting. But even here there are significant
enough differences between these options to merit a careful choice among them.
However, if you are primarily interested in reforming your city council or state
legislature, you can skip over this chapter and go on to the final chapter.

Chapter seven, the last chapter, addresses the fourth and final step in the
choice process: selecting the best system. When you have learned about all the
alternatives and their political consequences, it is time to choose the best
one. To do this, you must decide which system best meets the criteria you
developed in the first step of the analytic process. This chapter guides you
through a method of organizing your criteria and all of the information you have
collected about these systems, so that your final choice is easier. The chapter
also contains a discussion of the some of the common pitfalls encountered in
trying to choose a system and explains how to avoid them.

Following these chapters is a selected bibliography of books and articles on
this topic. In an effort to keep this book to a reasonable length, I sometimes
have been forced to summarize many of the arguments for and against each system
and to leave out some of the finer points of the analysis. Similarly, I have
also omitted some of the more esoteric details about the workings of some
systems. If you want to go into some of these issues in more depth and
detail--which I would encourage you to do if you have the time--then the works
in this bibliography are the place to start. Following the bibliography is a
section identifying some additional resources: web sites with additional
information on voting systems, and a list of organizations that are involved in
voting system reform.

Additional information on various aspects of voting systems can also be found
in a number of appendixes. One contains brief descriptions of little used voting
systems, ones that are so uncommon that I felt that they did not merit prolonged
analysis in the text--but which may be of interest to some readers. Another
appendix contains a description of the history of proportional representation
elections in the United States. On the more practical side, another appendix
contains sample statutory language for alternative systems like instant run-off
voting, choice voting, and cumulative voting.

At first, the large amount of material in this book might seem to be a bit
overwhelming. You certainly should not feel that you must plow through it all in
one sitting. Instead, feel free to dip into various parts and use them as they
seem appropriate in whatever stage of the choice process you are in. In the end,
my hope is that all the information and analysis in this book will enable you to
think more clearly and critically about voting systems; allow you to engage in
more intelligent discussions and debates about these systems; and ultimately, if
you choose, help you to change what goes on "behind the ballot box."